Christmas Cookie Extravaganza!

So I went on a liiiiiiittle bit of a cookie baking spree this week. I didn’t mean to make so many, it’s just that I love baking too much! I think it’s so cool that you can throw together ingredients that you’d never eat alone and then all the sudden you have a delicious cookie! I also had some flops and some burnt batches, so I ended up baking more than I meant to.

One kind of cookie I ended up making was Chocolate Chocolate Chip, with peppermint and marshmallows! I simply looked up a regular Chocolate Cookie recipe, and added in my “extras”.

I got some peppermints and pounded them up in a baggie. Don’t worry, I was dancing around while pounding. It makes the whole process much more entertaining. Especially when my little brother is egging me on and my mother is staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.

After mixing chocolate chips and my peppermint into the cookie dough, I then grabbed a small bit of dough and placed a marshmallow on top (Christmas themed, of course).

Then I wrapped the dough around the marshmallow and, voila!

There were the green Christmas trees, and the red hearts!

Here is how they turned out! Pretty delicious looking if I do say so myself. I actually made all non-gluten free cookies, so I had a lot of help from my family to test them! You might think I’m crazy to make all these cookies that I can’t eat, but honestly I’m really not supposed to eat much chocolate (soy) or white sugar, so it’s best if I can’t eat them. But don’t worry, I made a batch of gluten free sugar cookies (from a box mix… feeling lazy at that point).

But didn’t these turn out pretty! They kind of exploded more than I anticipated… but that’s alright. Just more colorful!

I also made some Scottish Shortbread cookies. I’ve had these before but I’d never made them, so I thought I’d give it a go! The recipe was ridiculously easy: butter, sugar and flour. Although one thing I learned this week: it really does matter that you cream the butter and sugar together and then add the flour… threw out some dough when I learned that the hard way.

I colored the dough red and green and made a few simple cut out shapes:

And then I also tried to copy an idea I saw on pinterest, but it didn’t look quiiiite as pretty… I tried.

I rolled out the red and green dough, and then placed the green on top of the red. Then I rolled them together to make a swirl.

The problem was that when I cut into it, it made it an oval shape and kinda messed up the swirl. I think it would have been better had my layers been thicker. But oh well, I made it work!

 

I packaged up these two batches and a couple others to bring over to some friends. It was also a great excuse to stop by and catch up with people! Holidays are so busy with family that sometimes it’s hard to work in time with friends!

 

Do you enjoy baking? Have you made any holiday cookies or other baked goods?

Do you find it’s hard to catch up with everyone who is in town over the holidays?